Necromancer 36

Test

36. Toudou Ran

Toudou Ran’s family is among the wealthiest in Japan.

From childhood, he was given what you’d call elite education.

His parents expected him to always be the best, both in academics and athletics, and he met those expectations.

Ran was always a victor.

Whenever he achieved outstanding results in school or outside, his parents looked pleased.

Ran, too, loved seeing that look on their faces, so he never slacked on improving himself.

Born to a Japanese father and a foreign mother, Ran had strikingly beautiful looks.

Called an angel by those around him, he was loved and adored by everyone.

His life was filled with love and happiness.

Ran’s fate took a drastic turn when he was in third grade.

The trigger was his mother’s sudden disappearance.

At the time, he knew nothing of the reason, but he later learned that his mother had secretly been in a relationship with one of the servants at the mansion for several years.

Compared to his father, this man was unremarkable and ten years younger than his mother.

What could have drawn her to such a man?

But his mother left behind a note and disappeared from the mansion with him.

She abandoned all the security and happiness promised as the wife of a wealthy man.

And, too, her beloved son, Ran.

Two years later, his father’s company suddenly went bankrupt.

No, in reality, there had been signs of collapse much earlier, and it might have reached its limit, bringing the company to an end, but to Ran, it felt like a sudden bankruptcy.

At the same time, his father disappeared.

Two days later, his body was found in the forest on their property.

—He had hanged himself.

It seemed to be from the strain of being abandoned by his mother.

The company’s decline, too, was apparently due to the great emotional shock of his mother leaving him for another man, causing him to neglect his business and everything else.

Both his father and mother had left Ran behind.

Without a word, leaving him behind without a second thought.

In response, he didn’t feel sadness or anger.

He only remembers feeling an intense “disappointment.”

Disappointment that neither his father nor mother had ever truly cared about him.

Disappointment that he wasn’t someone who could earn their love or concern.

With that sense of disappointment, Ran was taken in by a distant relative and adopted into their family.

His last name changed from that of his birth family to “Tōdō,” the family that took him in.

Now Toudou Ran, he realized not only his name but his very nature had changed.

There was an emptiness inside him.

No matter what he did, he felt no joy. No matter what happened, he felt no sadness.

He realized that the “emotions” he once had felt hollow.

As if his very feelings had disappeared… Ran had become a person without emotions.

The trigger was probably the disappointment he felt when his father died.

At that moment—Ran stopped believing in himself.

He stopped believing in his own worth. Even though he possessed remarkable abilities in academics, sports, and other areas, what mattered?

No matter how capable he was, he couldn’t even gain his parents’ love.

In his father’s and mother’s hearts, he didn’t exist.

And that was unbearably lonely.

So—.

He wanted to leave his mark on others’ hearts.

This impulse kept growing within Ran—.